


A Place at the Table

by SophiaCatherine



Series: Neurodivergent DCTV fics [8]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Autistic Mick Rory, Background Relationships, Gen, Neurodivergent Headcanons, bipolar Sara Lance, bits of angst but with a heartwarming ending I promise, friendship fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24807448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophiaCatherine/pseuds/SophiaCatherine
Summary: Mick is missing old members of Team Legends.
Relationships: Sara Lance & Mick Rory
Series: Neurodivergent DCTV fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/997320
Comments: 22
Kudos: 63





	A Place at the Table

**Author's Note:**

> Yesterday was Autistic Pride Day. This got longer than I expected it to, which is why it's a day late, but here's a neurodivergent Legends fic, in my classic style, to celebrate.

That Saturday morning, Sara is awoken by a crash, over a yell that might be a _Fuck!_

“Gideon,” Sara hisses, trying not to wake Ava. “What was that?”

“That was Mick Rory, dropping a box of eggs in the galley, Captain,” Gideon replies, just as quietly. 

Sara lets her head drop back against the headboard. “Of course it was.”

Beside her, Ava opens sleepy eyes. “He was fine yesterday,” she murmurs, yawning. “Want me to go and check on him?”

Sara shakes her head. “Thanks, babe. I got this.”

She can hear Mick’s muttering even all the way down the hall. As she turns into the galley, there’s no sign of the broken eggs now. Mick’s standing at the stove, dumping a new batch into a frying pan.

“I see you’re really taking your frustration out on those shells, Mick.” She takes a step inside the galley. “Don’t blame the poor eggs for whatever the last ones did to hurt you.”

He pauses, mid-crack, to lift his eyes in her direction and grunt something unintelligible. Then he turns back to his frying pan. 

So. That went well.

Sara takes another cautious step closer. It’s not just eggs that Mick is working on. He’s got pancakes browning in another pan, bacon in a third. “Cooking for the crew?” she asks, aiming for cheerful.

He just shrugs. 

The sizzle of oil from multiple pans could be intentional, to deter anyone trying to get near him. It might take League of Assassins training to get past that armor, but Sara’s never been afraid of Mick or his posturing. She leans back against the counter, trying to catch his eye. Figuring out how to deal with their resident pyromanic has been a five-year mission all its own, one that Sara regrets she didn’t take more seriously at the beginning. 

She’s not sure when it happened — but at some point during the past few years, Mick Rory became the glue that held this messy, broken family together. It took a lot longer for Sara to begin to understand what’s going on beneath his calloused surface, but she’s getting there. Usually, he’s cheerful when he cooks, or at least as close as Mick Rory gets. Right now he’s slumped over the stove so sadly that it hurts to watch.

“Mick,” she says again.

He keeps right on frying, but he _almost_ smiles. “Ain’t gonna give up, are ya?”

She grins, taking the light tone as permission to reach over and pat him on the shoulder. “What’s up?”

“Dunno,” he says. Then, so quietly that Sara isn’t sure she’s heard right, he adds, “No one’s gonna want this.”

She feels herself frown at him. Then at the pan of eggs. “What, the food?”

A pause, a single nod, and he’s back to frying. 

“Sure they will,” Sara says. “Who doesn’t like eggs and pancakes?”

Dumping a pancake out of the other pan, Mick scowls. “Was making these the way Haircut likes ‘em. I forgot.”

She looks back down at the stack of pancakes. They are indeed done Ray Palmer-style, so light they’ll be almost raw inside. She remembers passing on a few of those pancakes over the years, while Ray cheerfully finished the lot. 

Sara is learning how to push past the solid walls Mick builds to keep out a confusing, dangerous world. But even with his family around him, people he can trust, he doesn’t always know how to unlock the doors of his own personal prison and let himself out. It can take time. She tries to give it to him, that Saturday morning. She sinks into the distant sound of Zari, Behrad and Nate waiting for the bathroom, just being the disaster Legends they are, at their usual volume. And waits for Mick to talk.

“They’re all gone,” Mick says, at last. Somewhere beneath his low rumble, he almost sounds forlorn.

Down the hall, a fight is breaking out over whose turn is next. Grimacing, Sara nods her head towards the door. “Doesn’t sound like it to me.” 

Mick shrugs. “Not the same.”

He means it’s not the same _team_ , she realizes, and suddenly it all falls into place. Her heart breaks a little for him. 

Leonard Snart told her once, a long time ago, that Mick wasn’t good with change. It was something of an understatement. There’s been a lot of reconfiguring of their chaotic little family recently — new people, messy renegotiations of dynamics — but she thought Mick was doing okay with it. After Charlie left, he shut himself away in his room for a couple of days, but then he seemed to get over it.

If Ray Palmer was here, she’d make him lead some team building exercises, if only so Mick could roll his eyes and complain about them. But he’s not here, and that’s the problem.

Mick glares harder at the pan. “All the weird ones have gone.” 

Sara tries not to laugh at that. If anything, the team’s only getting weirder by the day. But Mick seems to need her to listen, so she doesn’t interrupt.

He dumps the last of the food out of the pan, grabs the full plates and strides to the table. Sara follows him, ready to offer to help, but Mick just pauses at the table.

He moves slowly around its curve. “Zari,” he says, as he reaches the first empty chair, staring hard at it. Now that they’ve got their memories back, grieving the first Zari has been complicated for all them, knowing she isn’t really gone. Sometimes Sara passes the other Zari in the hallway, and she gets a bright flash of memory, checked shirts and donuts and sarcasm, clashing hard with the reality of her smiling friend. One more ghost haunting the halls of the Waverider, trailing after her flesh-and-blood counterpart. But Sara doesn’t think she’s heard Mick mention Zari Tomaz yet. She watches as he puts the piled-high plate of eggs down in front of the empty seat. He says, “Over easy with hot sauce on the side,” and frowns. “Hot sauce meant it didn’t remind her of home.”

Sara remembers, now that she _can_ remember. The old Zari had eaten alone for weeks, after she first came onboard. Till Mick had started making her breakfast, working through a dozen new ways to serve it. Zari settled on eggs done in a way that worked for her, and that was how she ate them for the rest of her time on the Waverider. The term _PTSD_ might not have been one either she or Mick would ever have said out loud, but he could relate enough to meet her on their common ground – food.

Mick moves to the next chair, putting down the stack of pancakes. “Haircut.” He taps the back of the chair. All this talking from Mick Rory is such a rare event, especially when he’s upset, that Sara doesn’t interrupt. “He’d be freaking out now. Saying I didn’t get the pancakes right, or I should’ve set a timer so the eggs were done at the same time.” He glares at the chair. “Like he thought he was the only autistic person on this fucking ship.” 

Sara tries not to laugh, and fails. She takes Mick’s very mild glare as a sign that it’s okay to answer now. “You miss him. And Zari.” The most obviously neurodivergent members of the team. She’s starting to see the pattern. 

The ship is still full of neurodivergent Legends. If Mick’s feeling alone… Well, he shouldn’t be.

But she thinks she’s catching on. She steps one seat ahead of Mick, placing a hand on the back of it. “Dr. Nate Heywood,” she says. “He’s got ADHD, remember? Hard to forget, when he’s playing that awful music at full blast anytime he can’t concentrate, till my brain starts dripping out of my ears.” She drops into to a conspiratorial tone. “I found him in the cargo bay having a meltdown last week. _Don’t_ tell him I told you.” She moves on the next seat, running a thoughtful hand over it. “John. I doubt he has a diagnosis, but the depths that man can sink to—” and she points an accusing finger at Mick— _“more_ than rival yours.”

“Warlock’s an asshole,” Mick protests, but he’s frowning at the seat like he’s thinking about it.

“And you know the ones who aren’t here right now are still Legends, don’t you?” She taps the back of another seat. “Mona Wu, dyslexic writer and all round excellent person.” She meets Mick’s eye. “You know, even though she loves reading, I don’t think she would ever have had the confidence to write if you hadn’t encouraged her.” Mick huffs, but his face softens at the mention of his friend. 

Sara’s almost run out of seats, now, so she starts a second round of the table. “Nora Darhk—still a Legend, just like Ray, whether or not they’re here right now—and I never met a more courageous survivor, diagnosis or not.” 

And then she takes a risk, and one more step. With her hand on the back of a chair that wasn’t even here back then, in a galley that the man himself would not have recognized, she says, “Leonard Snart.” She meets Mick’s dangerous _don’t go there_ glare and holds his gaze. “I don’t know what his deal was—you’d know better than me—but he wasn’t exactly neurotypical.”

With thoughtful eyes, Mick just looks at her. Walls crumbling.

Taking advantage of the silence, Sara walks all around the table, till she’s close enough to touch Mick, and lays a hand on his arm. “Mick Rory.” At his wide-eyed stare, she says, “It hasn’t totally slipped my notice, Mick. It’s my job to know what’s going on on this ship, and you and I have been here a long time.” 

She’s seen him grow so much in that time. She wasn’t fond of the reluctant Rogue who wanted out of Rip’s mission, and when he turned brutal bounty hunter, she thought he’d never come back from it. He did, and it was the first time he surprised her. Once he finally made it past the fallout from that, she watched him grow to become even more. Totem bearer. Unlikely friend to all of them, even the most hopeless strays among the Legends. Her right hand man on the bridge, often enough, as much as he pretends he doesn’t want to be there. Watching him this year, with Lita, he’s made her as proud as any of her family could. It’s been a long five years. The two of them, on board the longest, have watched each other travel the furthest.

“Autistic,” Mick finally replies to her not-quite-question, in a mutter, eyes dropping like he’s ashamed of it.

Sara rubs his arm. She doubts that’s anywhere near the whole story, but maybe saying that chapter out loud helps. She hopes so. “I know some of the people who’ve gone…” She grins, and finishes, “…were the other freaks on this ship who reminded you of you.” She sees his lips twitch, still reluctant to smile. “But, one way or another, they’re still here, Mick. And, trust me, there are people on this team who still get you.” 

“Yeah?” he murmurs, to the floor.

And she takes one last risk. Places a hand on her chest. “Sara Lance,” she says, as she looks back up at her friend’s surprised blink. She hangs onto the chair beside her as she forces herself to voice all the things she doesn’t like to say out loud, if she can help it. “Bipolar since I was eighteen. A _shipload_ of PTSD, and the way my life will always be entwined with death doesn’t exactly help.” She sighs, refusing to let that ever-present darkness blot out her light again. “Every time I think I’ve got past that, it just catches up with me.” She feels a hand squeezing her own where it’s still on Mick’s arm, and she blinks something out of her eye, making herself carry on. “First the bloodlust, then Death Witch, and then all that shit with the Loom… All I ever see is death.”

“No,” he says firmly, and she looks up into determined eyes. “That ain’t all you are.”

It’s more of a confession of friendship than she ever gets from him, and she smiles. One more flame to light the way in the darkness. She can never have too many.

He gently pushes her hand from his arm, heading back towards the counter. “Come on. Got food to serve.” He piles a plate high with eggs and bacon, passing it Sara. “For Ava.”

She remembers something, and grins. “I didn’t even hear her come in last night. What were you two watching?”

“American Horror Story. Till three in the morning,” he replies, clearly proud he can keep Ava up that late. He looks at the plate, then sticks another egg on it. “Get her a coffee.”

Sara just smiles. Mick doesn’t mention his odd friendship with Ava very often, but it makes Sara happy.

And she looks at Mick, busy at the stove, and finds herself hoping it makes him happy too. She hopes all his weird little connections across this weird little family make him feel less alone in the wide, overwhelming world that could never make room for someone like him. She hopes he knows there’ll always be a place for him around the Legends’ table.

She hopes she can remember the same for herself.

“You just gonna stand there, or you gonna help?” he asks. “I gotta feed Nate, Behrad _and_ Zari here. It’s gonna take all week.”

Sara laughs, taking another plate to the table as Mick grabs the flour and starts making up another batch of pancake batter.

They’re going to need more eggs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I love comments and always reply.


End file.
